North Carolina: Federal Court Throws Out North Carolina’s Congressional Districts, Again | The New York Times

A panel of three federal judges again declared North Carolina’s congressional district map to be unconstitutional, ruling on Monday that it was gerrymandered to unfairly favor Republican candidates. The decision, which may have significant implications for control of Congress after the midterm elections, is likely to be appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which for the moment is evenly split on ideological lines without a ninth justice to tip the balance. Though North Carolina’s voters tend to divide about evenly between the two parties, Republicans currently hold 10 of the state’s 13 House seats. A redrawn district map may put more of the seats within Democrats’ reach. The three judges had ruled unanimously in January that the state’s House map violated the First and 14th Amendments by unfairly giving one group of voters — Republicans — a bigger voice than others in choosing representatives.

North Carolina: GOP legislators seek to take power from Democratc governor | The Hill

North Carolina’s General Assembly on Monday will consider changes for two amendments that, if approved by voters in November, would dramatically shift the balance of power away from the governor and to the state legislature. The amendments are part of a battle between the state’s Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and legislative Republicans, who hold supermajorities in both houses of the legislature. The amendments would allow the legislature to claim more power over appointments to both open judicial seats and the state Board of Elections. At present, Cooper holds the power to appoint judges to vacant seats and to the Board of Elections.

North Carolina: Constitutional amendments: Judges say two proposals have misleading language | News & Observer

A panel of Superior Court judges on Tuesday blocked two North Carolina constitutional amendments from statewide ballots. The order from a three-judge panel said ballots should not be printed that ask voters to make changes in the state constitution on how state boards and commission members are appointed and how judges are selected to fill vacancies. The order said those ballot questions did not fully inform voters of the changes that would result if the measures passed. The court order gives Gov. Roy Cooper a victory, at least temporarily, in his lawsuit against legislative leaders. The order has no real effect since the judges last week ordered that no ballots be printed while the court cases and appeals continue. Attorneys representing Cooper, the state elections board and legislative leaders said at a hearing last week they would appeal the order if their side lost.

North Carolina: Judges skeptical of challenges to proposed amendments | WRAL

A panel of three Superior Court judges on Wednesday ordered state elections officials to hold off printing ballots for the November election until the courts could weigh in on challenges brought by Gov. Roy Cooper to two proposed constitutional amendments. Cooper charges that amendments giving lawmakers the power to fill vacant judgeships between elections and appoint people to dozens of state boards and commissions are worded so poorly on the ballot that they will mislead voters as to their impact. “A ballot question that does not fairly and accurately present [what it does] amounts to a deceit on the people of North Carolina, and it corrodes and, I suggest, it corrupts their right to amend their constitution,” said John Wester, an attorney for Cooper. “This cannot become the law of our state.” The two proposals use “feel-good phrasing” to encourage voters to approve them, Wester said, when state law requires that amendment language be fair and non-discriminatory.

North Carolina: Republican legislators violated a candidate’s constitutional rights, judge rules | News & Observer

A judge threw out a new state law Monday, ruling that it violated the constitutional rights of at least two politicians whose 2018 campaigns the law had targeted. Chris Anglin, a Republican candidate for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court, had sued the legislature along with Rebecca Edwards, a Democrat who is running to become a district court judge in Wake County. Earlier this summer, the legislature passed a new law that would have prevented Anglin or Edwards from being able to have their party affiliations on the ballot. They argued that the law unfairly targeted them because their competitors in this November’s elections would still have their own parties listed on the ballot. Anglin, who is believed to have been the main target of the new law, is one of two Republicans running for the Supreme Court seat against a single Democratic candidate.

North Carolina: Judge voids part of North Carolina election law | Associated Press

A federal judge invalidated part of North Carolina elections law that allows one voter to challenge another’s residency, a provision that activist groups used to scrub thousands of names from rolls ahead of the 2016 elections. U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs said in an order signed Wednesday that the residency challenges are pre-empted by the 1993 federal “motor voter” law aimed at expanding voting opportunities. The National Voter Registration Act “encourages the participation of qualified voters in federal elections by mandating certain procedures designed to reduce the risk that a voter’s registration might be erroneously canceled. Defendants’ conduct contravened these procedures,” Biggs wrote.

North Carolina: Roy Cooper sued election board. Instead of fighting, the board’s lawyer took his side | News & Observer

wo constitutional amendments planned for the fall ballot. Rather than fighting Cooper, the state lawyer representing the elections board has jumped in on Cooper’s side. The state Republican Party is calling out state Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, for supporting the Democratic governor’s position on the lawsuit without getting election board members’ approval. “It is highly unusual for an attorney to make a decision of this magnitude without a formal request or vote from his client board,” the state GOP said in a statement. “It is illegal for any member of the board to take a public stance on a ballot question.” In an email, a spokeswoman for Stein said the office is confident it is properly representing the board. “Our office has consulted closely with the State Board about this case and will continue to do so,” spokeswoman Laura Brewer said in an email. “Attorney client privilege prevents me from sharing the substance of those conversations. We are confident our clients are aware of and support the action we are taking in this litigation.”

North Carolina: Russian election threat grows, but GOP wants more scrutiny of North Carolina voters | News & Observer

The motive behind requiring a photo ID to vote has always been thinly veiled. The real intention isn’t to protect the integrity of an election. It’s to discourage voting by people from groups that tend to vote Democratic — African-Americans, Hispanic immigrants and college students, in particular. Now the investigation into Russian meddling in U.S. elections has laid that hypocrisy bare. The U.S. intelligence community agrees that the threat of Russia’s interference is real. Studies show the threat of people impersonating other voters isn’t. Yet North Carolina’s lawmakers are pushing to stop the latter and saying little about the former.

North Carolina: Worried about the security of your vote? New technology may help ease your mind | News & Observer

You’ve researched the candidates and made your decisions. You head to your polling place, fill out your ballot, and put it in the scanner. But as it gets sucked into the machine, what’s happening to it? If you use a touch-screen voting machine, or assistive technology, what happens when you submit your vote and it flies off into the ether? The latest generation of machines offer more assurance that your vote counts. In what is likely to be the largest overhaul of North Carolina’s voting technology in a decade, counties across the state are preparing to comply with a statewide requirement to phase out voting machines that don’t mark a physical paper ballot by Sept. 1, 2019. Lawmakers and activists say those devices, known as direct-recording electronic voting machines, do not produce a sufficient record. The requirement is one of the surviving provisions of North Carolina’s controversial 2013 voter ID law.

North Carolina: Arrested, Jailed and Charged With a Felony. For Voting. | The New York Times

Keith Sellars and his daughters were driving home from dinner at a Mexican restaurant last December when he was pulled over for running a red light. The officer ran a background check and came back with bad news for Mr. Sellars. There was a warrant out for his arrest. As his girls cried in the back seat, Mr. Sellars was handcuffed and taken to jail. His crime: Illegal voting. “I didn’t know,” said Mr. Sellars, who spent the night in jail before his family paid his $2,500 bond. “I thought I was practicing my right.” Mr. Sellars, 44, is one of a dozen people in Alamance County in North Carolina who have been charged with voting illegally in the 2016 presidential election. All were on probation or parole for felony convictions, which in North Carolina and many other states disqualifies a person from voting. If convicted, they face up to two years in prison.

North Carolina: Judges hear arguments over state elections board for third time | WRAL

For the third time in a little more than a year, a panel of three Superior Court judges was asked Thursday to weigh the legality of a revamped State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement. The elections board has been at the center of a power struggle between Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Republican legislative leaders since before Cooper took office, and each side has claimed victories in the ongoing dispute. Traditionally, the five-member elections board was controlled by the party of the governor, but after Cooper defeated Republican Gov. Pat McCrory in 2016, lawmakers merged the board with the eight-member Ethics Commission and said the new panel would be evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.

North Carolina: GOP’s plan to deceive voters about its radical ballot measures | Slate

In November, North Carolina voters will have an opportunity to approve six constitutional amendments proposed by the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature. These amendments range from silly to atrocious, and a majority are designed to prevent the state’s Supreme Court and Democratic governor from protecting voting rights. But voters may have little idea what any of the amendments do, because Republicans have hatched a plan to give themselves the power to write the ballot language without any input from Democrats. The North Carolina GOP decided to alter the state constitution for a few reasons. First, they hoped to drive up Republican turnout by tossing some red meat to the base. Second, they want to stop Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper from expanding access to voting rights by stripping him of his constitutional authority to oversee state elections. Third, and relatedly, they want to prevent the left-leaning state Supreme Court, and the rest of the judiciary, from striking down GOP-sponsored voter suppression laws. (A federal appeals court struck down Republicans’ previous voter ID law, ruling that it appeared to “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.”)

North Carolina: State details plans for $13M in election security upgrades | WRAL

State officials will spend more than $7 million over the next two years to upgrade and secure the decade-old system that forms the backbone of the state’s elections. They’ll use several million more in mostly federal dollars to fund additional auditing and cybersecurity measures as the state works to harden election systems in the wake of nationwide Russian interference in 2016. State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement spokesman Patrick Gannon said the agency has no indication of any “successful infiltration” into North Carolina election systems during the last election. But state officials are taking seriously mounting evidence from the U.S. intelligence community and federal investigators of widespread disinformation campaigns and repeated attacks on critical election infrastructure across the country.

North Carolina: New state law will mean fewer places to vote early in some counties | News & Observer

The cost to implement a recently-passed state law has left many North Carolina counties’ boards of elections unsure how to manage early voting for this November’s midterm elections, and some are planning to offer fewer voting locations to comply with the law. While all counties must have a central early voting site open during business hours, most counties have also used additional “one-stop” voting sites, operated by volunteers and temporary paid staffers. Those sites accommodate voters for whom the central polling place, usually located at the Board of Elections office, is less convenient.

North Carolina: A little-noticed ballot change could have a big impact this year | Charlotte Observer

A little-noticed bill passed by lawmakers last month could have a big impact on the race for North Carolina’s Supreme Court. The bill, now law, will put Democrat Anita Earls’ name last on the ballot for the court contest. It would have come first under the old law. Studies have shown ballot order favors the candidate listed first, and could make a difference in a close race. That change comes on the heels of another new law that puts all judicial races — including the Supreme Court — at the bottom of the ballot behind other races.  “It’s clearly done in the hopes of Republicans that ballot fatigue will kick in, and that will result in a drop-off of votes for those offices at the bottom of the ballot,” said Wayne Goodwin, the state Democratic chairman.

North Carolina: Voter ID amendment goes to voters | WRAL

North Carolina voters will be asked this fall to add a photo identification requirement for voting to the state constitution. The state Senate gave final approval to the proposal Friday on a party-line 33-12 vote. There was little discussion on the floor for a bill that has been through multiple committees and floor votes this session and has been a hotly contested issue for years between legislative Democrats and the Republican majority. This will be one of six proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot this November, and it takes a majority vote of the people to change the constitution. Voters will be asked to vote for or against a “constitutional amendment to require voters to provide photo identification before voting in person.”

North Carolina: Supreme Court Won’t Hear North Carolina Partisan Gerrymandering Case | The New York Times

The Supreme Court passed up an opportunity on Monday to take another look at whether the Constitution bars extreme partisan gerrymandering, returning a case from North Carolina to a trial court there for a further examination of whether the challengers had suffered the sort of direct injury that would give them standing to sue. The move followed two decisions last week that sidestepped the main issues in partisan gerrymandering cases from Wisconsin and Maryland. The new case was an appeal from a decision in January by a three-judge panel of a Federal District Court in North Carolina. The ruling found that Republican legislators there had violated the Constitution by drawing the districts to hurt the electoral chances of Democratic candidates.

North Carolina: Voter ID amendment one step from ballot | WRAL

Senators gave tentative approval Thursday to add a constitutional amendment to the ballot in November requiring photo identification for voting. The votes in both the House and the Senate were strictly along party lines, with Republican super-majorities backing the amendment and Democrats opposing it. Republican supporters said the requirement, should voters approve it, would ensure electoral integrity and restore public confidence. “Voting is a very privilege for us, and many have died to give us that privilege, and it needs to be protected,” said Sen. Joyce Krawiec, R-Forsyth. “This is the first step in doing that.” But Democrats blasted the proposal – and its Republican supporters – as fear-mongering in the pursuit of voter suppression, pointing out that an audit of the 2016 presidential election by the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement found only one case of voter impersonation that would have been prevented by voter ID.

North Carolina: Supreme Court Orders New Look at North Carolina Gerrymandering Case | Bloomberg

The U.S. Supreme Court told a panel of judges to reconsider a ruling that would force North Carolina to redraw its congressional voting map to give Republicans less of a partisan advantage. The justices ordered a new look based on their week-old ruling in a similar case from Wisconsin. That decision said Democratic voters hadn’t shown they have legal standing to challenge the state’s Republican-drawn assembly map. North Carolina Democrats are trying to invalidate a map that gave Republicans 10 of the 13 U.S. House seats in the 2016 election with 53 percent of the overall congressional vote. Democrats say fairer lines would produce something closer to representational parity. A three-judge panel said that North Carolina lawmakers were “motivated by invidious partisan intent” and that the map “perfectly achieved the General Assembly’s partisan objectives.”

North Carolina: Lawmakers seek amendment to settle elections board court fight | WRAL

Republican state lawmakers are moving ahead on a sixth proposed constitutional amendment that would once again restructure the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement. It would also, sponsors say, put an end to long-running litigation over the boundaries of executive and legislative power in the state constitution. Critics of the proposal, unveiled late Friday, say it’s setting the scene for legislators to take away the governor’s traditional appointments to many of the state’s quasi-judicial oversight boards and commissions. Supporters counter that the legislature already has ultimate delegating power over all appointments to all state boards and commissions that set policy. However, courts have not always agreed.

North Carolina: Republicans want lawmakers, not governor, to decide who oversees elections | News & Observer

Republicans want legislative leaders to appoint all members of the state elections board, a power now held by the governor. State House GOP leaders on Friday afternoon introduced a proposal to change the North Carolina Constitution to create an eight-member State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement with all members chosen by the House speaker and the Senate leader. Voters would have to agree in November to change the constitution if the proposal wins approval in the House and Senate. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Republican legislators have been fighting over the makeup of the board since Cooper’s election in November 2016. In the waning weeks of the administration of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, the Republican-led General Assembly put forward their first proposal to change the makeup of the elections and ethics boards.

North Carolina: Thwarted before, GOP wants photo ID mandate | Associated Press

North Carolina legislative Republicans on Thursday advanced their goal of permanently requiring voters to show photo identification — a proposal previously thwarted this decade by veto and federal judges who declared a similar mandate racially discriminatory. Legislation to allow the state’s voters to decide whether to place a photo identification directive in their state’s constitution cleared a General Assembly committee on party lines. By taking the route of enshrining it the North Carolina Constitution, Republicans believe the idea would get permanent legal backing while putting an idea popular with their base on the November ballots in what’s expected to be a challenging political campaign for them. The bill’s next stop is the House floor in the final days of this year’s legislative session.

North Carolina: Voter ID constitutional amendment advances in House | News & Observer

A controversial change proposed for the state constitution gained momentum Thursday as Republican legislators demonstrated their continued commitment to requiring voters show photo identification at the polls. Voters in November would be asked if photo ID for in-person voting should be a constitutional requirement. Legislators would have the power to make the rules, which they could do any time after the election. As they voted to move the proposal to a vote of the full House, Republicans in a House committee knocked down two Democratic proposals, one of which was to wait until next year to write the photo ID rules. Democrats hope to win enough seats in the November election to eliminate Republicans’ supermajorities in next year’s session.

North Carolina: Senate overrides Cooper vetoes of judicial district, election bills | Winston-Salem Chronicle

Republican legislators are moving to try to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes, this time on legislation redrawing judicial districts in some of North Carolina’s counties and election security. The North Carolina Senate on Tuesday, June 19, voted to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes of two bills – Senate Bill 486, which tightens election security measures to protect against the threat of outside influence, and Senate Bill 757, which makes changes to judicial districts in four counties. House Republicans would vote either Wednesday or today. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes of two bills adds more uncertainty to already unusual state elections this fall for judges and in races where new political parties want to field candidates. Cooper announced late Friday – less than three hours before a 10-day state constitutional deadline – his decision to block a pair of measures.

North Carolina: Judge rules for lawmakers: No primary elections for judges | News & Observer

In the first year in decades that all judicial races will be partisan races, North Carolina will not have primary elections that allow the political parties to winnow the names of candidates who will appear on ballots this fall. U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles notified attorneys for the Democratic Party and North Carolina lawmakers on Tuesday that she plans to rule for the legislators in a lawsuit filed late last year. The North Carolina Democratic Party contended that abolishing primary elections for judicial races violated its right to assemble and choose a candidate of its choice to appear on the ballot.

North Carolina: Is North Carolina partisan gerrymander case up next after Supreme Court ‘punts’ on Wisconsin and Maryland? | McClatchy

The U.S. Supreme Court sidestepped making a landmark ruling on Monday about when gerrymandering for partisan gain goes too far, leaving some legal analysts to speculate that North Carolina could have the next case to test that question. The justices issued long-awaited rulings in Wisconsin and Maryland cases that could have had a profound stamp on legislative redistricting in the states and reshape American politics. Instead, the justices sent both cases back to lower courts for further proceedings, a move largely described on social media as “a punt.” That means the next case in the queue for the Supreme Court is the North Carolina lawsuit questioning whether the Republican-controlled General Assembly went too far in 2016 when it redrew the state’s 13 congressional districts in response to a court order. A panel of federal judges ruled in January that North Carolina’s congressional districts were unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders, and an appeal awaits action by the Supreme Court.

North Carolina: Republicans Are Back With a New Plan for Strict Voter Laws | The New York Times

The last time Republicans in the North Carolina Legislature enacted a law making it harder for some of the state’s residents to vote, a federal court said the statute targeted African-American voters “with almost surgical precision,” and threw it out. That was last year. Now the legislators are back with a new set of election proposals, and an unconventional plan to make them stick. Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, Republican senators unveiled legislation that would eliminate the final Saturday of early voting in state elections, a day that typically draws a large share of black voters to the polls. That followed a Republican proposal last week to place a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would require all voters to display a photo ID before casting votes.

North Carolina: Gov. Cooper vetoes judicial district, election bills | Associated Press

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes of two bills adds more uncertainty to already unusual state elections this fall for judges and in races where new political parties want to field candidates. Cooper announced late Friday – less than three hours before a 10-day state constitutional deadline – his decision to block a pair of measures.n One adjusts many judicial election districts in Wake, Mecklenburg, Pender, and New Hanover counties. The other in part prevents the Green and Constitution parties this year from nominating for the November ballot any losing candidate primaries for the same office. The new parties didn’t participate in last month’s primaries and are holding nominating conventions. The Constitution Party of North Carolina was holding its convention Saturday.

North Carolina: This early voting plan would take away a popular day. It’s speeding through the North Carolina House | News & Observer

popular day for early voting would be eliminated under a proposal that supporters say is meant to bring uniformity to the 100 North Carolina counties’ one-stop voting schedules. The proposal to change early voting has bipartisan support and is speeding through the legislature. It was made public late Wednesday night and received a preliminary vote of approval in the state House on Thursday afternoon. House Speaker Tim Moore moved on to a vote before lawmakers were able to signal that they wanted to talk about the proposal. “Aren’t we going to debate the bill?” Rep. Marcia Morey, a Durham Democrat, could be heard asking while House members were voting.

North Carolina: If Voter ID Referendum Passes, Can It Survive A Legal Challenge? | WFAE

A bill filed by Republican legislative leaders last week would let voters decide whether to add a constitutional amendment to require photo IDs at the polls. A federal court shot down a previous attempt at Voter ID laws in North Carolina. If the question gets on the ballot this fall and passes, would it stand up to a legal challenge? Legal experts say there’s nothing inherently unconstitutional about Voter ID laws – 34 states have them. The issue is the motivation behind the laws. “What makes them unconstitutional is if they’re adopted with an intent to discriminate against a particular racial group, or racial groups,” Duke University Law School professor Guy Charles said.